A Thorn In My Side

Year: 1995

Director: Joe Chappelle

Cast: Donald Pleasence, Paul Rudd, Marianne Hagan 

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Part sixes can be good. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is an excellent cross between gothic horror and winking humor, and Saw VI actually had a political agenda other than vacuuming people’s guts out. So forgive me for not adjusting the curve for Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the first flat-out abysmal entry in the series. Sure, I also despised Halloween 5, but that film was too silly to provoke any hardcore ire.

Halloween 6 (which lacks the number in the official title, because producers already didn’t want audiences to catch on to how damn many of these films there were) does not have that luxury. No, it’s your run of the mill blood-boiling suckfest, and it’s all the worse for it. To be fair, the film was so extensively tampered with by overzealous studio heads that it’s lucky it even remotely resembles a coherent narrative and not a jumbled page from an asylum inmate’s scrapbook. However, my sympathy for an addled movie does not actually extend to enjoying it.

I’m not enough of a fanboy to be that magnanimous.

Halloween 6 goes like this: It has been six years since Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur returning from Halloween 4) and his niece Jamie Lloyd (played by the singularly unprepossessing J. C. Brandy, who looks about fifteen years too old for the part) disappeared in a police station explosion. We open on Jamie giving birth and escaping a cult compound, whereupon she hides her baby in a bus station bathroom before being gruesomely offed in an abandoned farmhouse.

Cut to nobody that matters. Relatives of the Strode family have taken up residence in the old Myers house, and they run through about 30 beats of twisted family drama (that never comes up again) over the course of one breakfast. Kara (Marianne Hagan) has recently returned to her family’s home after five years of estrangement, her six-year-old son Danny (Devin Gardner) in tow. Her dowdy mother Debra (Kim Darby) welcomes her with open arms, but her father John (Bradford English) is the undefeated gold medalist of the Dickhat Olympics and relentlessly berates her, calling her son a bastard, at which point Danny pulls a knife on him. Again, this never ever is addressed at any other point in the movie.

Meanwhile, Laurie Strode’s babysitee Tommy Doyle (introducing Paul Stephen Rudd) is all grown up and on the hunt for the Boogeyman. He uses clues in Jamie’s distress call to a radio station to find her baby at the bus depot, then hooks up with Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance in his final Halloween film). Their combined hysterical soliloquizing leads us to the knowledge that the druids bestowed Michael Myers with the Curse of Thorn as a baby, forcing him to try and kill his family on the night of Samhain whenever the stars align or the producers need some fast cash. And although the Strodes aren’t technically related to him, he goes after them as well, possibly because he hates the tacky forest green and burnt umber paint job they gave to his house.

Double meanwhile, an obligatory teen subplot is hammed into the film at a sideways angle. Kara’s brother Tim (Keith Bogart) and his girlfriend Beth (Mariah O’Brien) attend the live radio show of shock jock Barry Simms (Leo Geter of Silent Night, Deadly Night), because this film is a science fiction tale about an alternate universe where teenagers actually listen to the radio in 1995. They go home, share the least erotic pillow talk in the history of sex, and get stabbed a whole lot.

If there’s one thing Michael hates more than his own family, it’s inexplicable teen hookups.

This is one of those movies that I watch so you don’t have to. At every single level, Halloween 6 is a technically incompetent slog and an abrasive insult against John Carpenter’s original masterpiece. Filled with irritating flash cuts to supposedly creepy images, the movie has the attention span of a TeenNick sketch show. When you take that with the lighting that drowns everything in shadow (at one point obscuring all but Tim’s forehead in a “close-up”), it feels like a Capri-Sun commercial as directed by early David Fincher.

And the sound design! It’s so easy to take good sound design for granted, but when it’s improperly done, it can tear a movie apart from the floorboards up. Halloween 6 might just have the single worst audio job I’ve ever seen in a reportedly professional film. The baby’s cries could only have been recorded in a tin outhouse for all the reverb on the canned track, and the kills sound like Michael is stabbing victims with a small piece of Velcro. Which, incidentally, I would pay to see. Also, the foley artist must have had a hot date that night, because every single sound cue in the rushed, sloppy mix is exactly the same. Unless it’s an artistic choice that closing a book, opening a door, and beaning someone with a fire poker all make the same identical, slightly metallic noise.

Perhaps it was an attempt to tonally match the violently wretched, screeching industrial music masquerading as a John Carpenter score.

Narrative logic went out the window back in Halloween 5 when Michael was revealed to have a tattoo that we haven’t seen the previous three times, but there are some extremely basic needs that fail to be met by the story. Let me ask you this: Who is the main character of Halloween 6? The obsessed Tommy Doyle, the eye-popping Dr. Loomis, and the besieged Kara all lurk offscreen for a nearly equal amount of time. There’s two separate innocent children that need protection from at least three villains who are jockeying for position. I’d suggest this was an Eisensteinian approach, emphasizing the socialist ideal of the collective over the individual, but I can’t say for certain that the director of Phantoms is intimately familiar with Soviet film history.

The logical leaps required to make sense of Halloween 6 would make a kangaroo jealous. I haven’t the foggiest idea how Michael would know where Barry was, or even have the inclination to kill him while in the middle of a siege on a house on the opposite end of town. Likewise, I’m very worried for the continued employment of the janitorial staff at the Haddonfield bus depot, who neither noticed the trail of blood across the floor nor the baby stuffed into the bathroom cupboard. The entire film is cobbled together from this sort of mildly confusing, perpetually frustrating detritus.

Michael Myers himself suffers from the film’s powerful negative aura. Though no mask could beat the combined efforts of Halloween 4 and 5’s sheer neck-flapping dime store tackiness, the hair on this one is teased out into Johnny Rotten oblivion, giving Michael the silhouette of a birthday clown.

I guess that’s intimidating in its own right, but it’s not exactly Beacon of Pure Evil.

Given the mire they have to trudge through, it should come as no surprise that the cast can’t make heads or tails of this movie. Donald Pleasance, just months before his tragic death, can’t bring himself to care about the dreck he’s spouting, reducing his scenery chewing to a mere nibble.  Paul Rudd does an OK job, his kind face and adorable almond yes clashing with the off-putting single-mindedness of Tommy Doyle. He does indulge himself with a couple of his trademark goody grins, but for the most part he provides the film with an unnamable dissonant quality that helps it along. As for the rest? I can’t imagine that they had the budget to fill everyone's mouths with marbles, but they sure did pull off that effect with aplomb.

I’ll say one food thing before we wrap up, just to leave things in a pleasant frame of mind. The gore, when it arrives, is pretty well constructed. There are only three moments in particular that stand out, but one is gruesome, one is devastating, and the other is a campy treasure. I can’t really complain about that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a page from Tim’s book and put my face directly beneath the shower nozzle to blast sand my brain of the memory of this painful, painful film.

Killer: Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur)

Final Girl: Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd) feat. Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan)

Best Kill: “John is such a dick, he’d better die painfully,” I said. I got my wish when he was split up the abdomen, impaled on a fuse box, and electrocuted, at which point his head explodes. Rah rah, Michael!

Sign of the Times: Doting mother or Twin Peaks log lady? You decide.

Scariest Moment: Blood rains down on a child from a tree where Barry’s body is stashed.

Weirdest Moment: Tommy Doyle has a magnet of the drag queen Divine on his fridge.

Champion Dialogue: “Psycho lays nympho – best sex she can ever dismember.”

Body Count: 9; not including an entire operating room full of druids.

1. Nurse has her head impaled on a spike.
2. Truck Driver has his head twisted backward.
3. Jamie Lloyd is impaled on a farming machine.
4. Debra is chopped with an axe.
5. John is stabbed, electrocuted, and his head explodes.
6. Barry is stabbed in the gut.
7. Tim has his throat slit.
8. Beth is stabbed in the back.
9. Random-Ass Doctor has his face smashed into iron bars.

TL;DR: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is pure pabulum with scarcely any redeeming qualities.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1610

Reviews In This Series

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)

Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Census Bloodbath: Hush Hush Hush, Here Comes The Boogeyman

Year: 1988

Director: Dwight H. Little

Cast: Donald Pleasence, Ellie Cornell, Danielle Harris 

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After the debacle that was the Myers-free Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the entire franchise went dormant for over half a decade. By the time it came wheezing back into cinemas waving the white flag of its desperately placating title – Halloween 4: the Return of Michael Myers – it was already 1988, perilously close to the death rattle of the slasher genre.

At this point in the decade, slashers were still a viable box office draw, but only if they were attached to franchise names. Luckily for Halloween 4, it was coming on the heels of one of the most successful slasher films of all time. The franchise may have lost its way, but that name still had caché.

Unfortunately for Cheerleader Camp, Destroyer, and Amsterdamned. But really, who would have watched them anyway? Oh right, me.

Halloween 4 finds itself at the beginning of a trilogy (though it doesn’t know it yet) centering on Haddonfield youth Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris). Jamie is the daughter of Laurie Strode (played by a headshot of Jamie Lee Curtis), who has since passed away and left her in the care of a foster family. Not many details are given, but I like to imagine that Laurie married Lance Guest the EMT and subsequently perished in a boating accident like the parents from Frozen.

Jamie’s adopted sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell) wants to spend Halloween night with her boyfriend Brady (Sasha Jenson), but is forced by her parents to take Jamie trick or treating. Brady, being a dude in a slasher movie and essentially a walking pair of testicles, immediately goes home with Kelly (Kathleen Kinmont), a girl with a bigger set of candy corns. When, as the title promises, Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur) breaks out of the hospital and returns to Haddonfield, murderously pursuing his niece and her sister, the girls take refuge in the Sheriff’s house (where Brady and Kelly have holed u) to wait out the night under police protection. Awkward.

And of course Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) returns, because how else would we know that Michael Myers is Pure Evil and that we don’t understand what death is?

Apparently hospital explosions are hardly stronger than accidentally placing your hand on a stove, at least if you’ve got a franchise riding on your back.

So here’s the deal. It’s basically impossible to have a lower budget than the original Halloween, which was pretty much made for the cost of a hardback book at Barnes and Noble. As exorbitant as that price may seem, it’s a pittance in the world of Hollywood filmmaking. Halloween 4’s allowance was easily 16 times that, but Dwight Little isn’t John Carpenter. He could have had 100 million and still not made a film as richly complex as Halloween. Although, to be fair, John Carpenter didn’t direct Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home, so Little has that over him.

But the fact remains that Halloween 4 looks more than a little tacky, which is by far its biggest flaw. The Michael Myers mask looks like a bargain bin purchase from the 99 cent store, and the makeup that bestows Dr. Loomis with his “hideously” burned visage brings to mind half-dried pancake batter. Not to mention it shifts position every time it thinks we’re not looking. If you’re craving convincing effects, you’re gonna stay hungry.

Although there is a pretty cool exploding gas station, because everything spontaneously combusts in 80’s horror. It’s a venerable tradition.

So that’s the readout when you weight Halloween 4 by Halloween standards. But that’s hardly fair, considering that that film is one of the true masterpieces of modern horror cinema. When you take it at slasher standards, the outlook brightens considerably. For a late 80’s creeper feature, the storytelling at work in Halloween 4 might as well be Chaucer.

It might sound unbelievable to those of you who are keen followers of Census Bloodbath, but this film actually has characters. I know, right? Perhaps they’re a bit fundamental, but they have substance, and Rachel specifically has an honest to goodness arc as she transforms from a selfish teenage brat into a caring older sister. On top of that (my, are we being spoiled), there are multiple storylines that weave in and out of Haddonfield’s ensigns, all of which come together in a remarkably satisfying manner. It’s almost like they think “seven to twelve teens gather together, then die” isn’t a solid enough structure to hang a story off of.

The nerve!

Halloween 4 also differs from the norm by actually casting people with more than a tattered shred of talent. Of course it goes without saying that Donald Pleasance is at the top of the heap, toning down his florid spittle spraying to a manageable dull roar, but he’s not the only standout. Ellie Cornell is a tenacious Final Girl with real vulnerability, incredible strength, and a tremendous scream (you’d think good screams would be a given in the horror genre, but that kind of thinking will only bring trouble).

Even young Danielle Harris knocks ‘em down, with a layered rendition of a young girl desperately in search of validation and identity. She seems decades older than she really is, a haunting effect that’s creepier than anything else in the movie but totally fits her tragically orphaned character. She proves herself more than worthy to carry on the royal lineage of the genre’s reigning Scream Queen (both within the movie and in real life – Curtis bailed out of horror after Halloween II wasted her and drowned her beneath a waxen wig.), but some tense, character-based chills tossed together with a dark, smoky, outdoor atmosphere is nothing to cry about.

If you really want to complain about something, you have limited options. There’s the aforementioned tackiness, of course, but that’s hardly out of character for the late 80’s. The only other element you can latch onto is the film’s vanilla approach to exploitation. A promising sex scene manages to avoid showing female or male chests, and the 1988 gore just ain’t what it used to be. But Halloween 4 is strong enough as a piece of cinema that it’s hard to feel cheated by the missing slasher trappings. Of course, it’s still a cheesy slasher at heart, but it’s a dark, engaging entry that’s absolutely worth checking out.

Killer: Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur)

Final Girl: Rachel (Ellie Cornell)

Best Kill: Kelly’s impaled on a shotgun. It’s pure slasher mayhem when guns are used as murder devices, but not as intended.

Sign of the Times: At one point, Michael mysteriously sports bleached blond hair.

Scariest Moment: Michael’s siege on the barricaded house.

Weirdest Moment: A gas station wall is decorated solely with dozens of framed photographs of Abraham Lincoln.

Champion Dialogue: “Oh God, Rachel Please come alive!”

Body Count: 12; not including a paramedic team, a dog, or an entire police station.

1. Attendant has a thumb shoved through his forehead.
2. Mechanic is impaled with a metal rod.
3. Waitress is killed offscreen.
4. Bucky is electrocuted by a transformer.
5. Ted Hollister is shot to death.
6. Deputy Logan is mangled offscreen.
7. Kelly is impaled on a shotgun. 
8. Brady has his face crushed.
9. Orrin is stabbed in the back and pushed off a truck.
10. Alan is stabbed in the stomach and pushed off a truck.
11. Unger is thrown off a truck.
12. Earl has his neck ripped open. 

TL;DR: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is a prim, but thrilling and skillfully told story.

Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1272
Reviews In This Series
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)